Woman arrested three months after dinner guests died from deadly mushrooms

Police in Australia have arrested a 49-year-old woman following a meal which left three people dead.

Erin Patterson was arrested on Thursday by Victoria Police, three months after the family gathering at her home in Leongatha.

She has publicly denied serving up the highly toxic death cap mushroom, a fungus responsible for about 90% of mushroom-related deaths globally.

Victoria Police Detective Inspector Dean Thomas said on Thursday a further search of her home would take place after her interview with police.

“Today’s arrest is just the next step in what has been a complex and thorough investigation by Homicide Squad detectives and one that is not yet over,” he said.

Patterson’s in-laws Gail and Don Patterson, both aged 70, died in hospital after the meal on July 29 alongside her sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, whose husband Ian Wilkinson, 68, was the lone survivor.

Police say the symptoms the four diners had suffered were consistent with poisoning by the wild and deadly variety of mushrooms, for which there is no antidote.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Patterson had issued a written statement, which claimed she had cooked a steak dish using mushrooms bought from a major supermarket chain.

She also used dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery store.

Patterson claimed she had also eaten the meal and later suffered stomach pains and diarrhea.

Police had previously searched her home on August 5, the day the third diner died.